@hala Great questions, 

To answer your first question, this is the workflow I would recommend to chart out a proactive customer journey map:

• Have a clear objective and intent for your customer journey map. What do you hope to achieve from creating one? What problems do you want to solve? It's best to know their expectations about your business to get a better idea of the kind of experiences to offer them. 
   
• Identify your customer persona. Analyze your audience, the kinds of customers that reach out to you and use your product/service. Keep a note of details such as their roles, the types of industries they come from, company sizes, and their needs. This will help you understand your customer base better and hence will improve the accuracy of your journey map.
   
• Now that the above is established, it's time to list out all the customer touchpoints in a given lifecycle. From onboarding to offboarding, define each touchpoint along with its desired outcome. Prioritize the ones that you'd want to focus on most (based on the goals you have defined earlier), and arrange them on your map.
   

Should customer journeys be different by each product, customer or revenue?
To answer the second part of the question, customer journeys can be segmented by various factors such as:

• Customer Persona
• Industry 
• Company Size
• Customer Use Cases
• Revenue
• Subscription Plan
• Various Products (for multi-product companies)
• Region 

Customer journeys are curated using a combination of the above factors. Moreover, each customer journey differs from industry to industry. It's not a "one size fits all" approach. 

IMO, B2C companies do the best segmentations. 

Hope this helps! :)

Hi @Hanan,

Not at all. Be it SaaS, Retail, E-learning, or rather any industry or service, customer journey mapping would apply. In fact, it also applies to products or employee journeys in a company. Of course, touchpoints, goals, and audiences will differ, but the fundamentals remain the same.

Hi @Jubiline C Bavan, 

Every customer interaction is valuable. However, there are some key touchpoints that every company focuses on to enhance their customer experience for the better. They typically are:

Pre-Sales 

• Brand Awareness 
• Problem Identification
• Investigate Solutions
• Evaluation of Customer Needs
• Justify & Quantify Value 
• Purchase 

Post-Sales 

• Onboarding & Implementation
• Satisfaction & Success
• Up-sell, Cross-sell
• Loyalty & Evangelism

Hope this helps! :) 

Hi @Vishak V,

The following KPIs but not limited should be monitored closely in the customer journey map specifically for online business, this would differ for other industries:

Pre-Sales 

• Visit-to-signup rate
• Trial-to-PQL rate
• PQL-to-customer rate

Post-Sales 

• Percentage of Active Customers
• NPS
• Churn Rate
• Renewal Rate

Hope this was helpful! :)

@Siddharth Lenka, great question.

The four best practices that’ll help you leverage customer journey maps to maximize business benefits are:

• Place yourself in your customers’ shoes and think of what could give you a delightful experience. Execute all the touchpoints in your journey map. Observe as you go from one touchpoint to the next, and identify any recurring issues. This will aid you in perceiving your business better from their eyes. 
   
• Take action. Once you’ve identified all the lags and roadblocks, don’t set them aside for later. Take the necessary measures and modify existing business processes to iron out all the issues your customers are facing. This not only optimizes your workflows but also creates a newfound appreciation from your customers since your company went that extra mile to solve their pain points. Additionally, providing a smooth process to your customers helps them find the value they’re looking for without any difficulties. This is how you build brand advocacy.
   
• Update your customer journey map regularly. Nothing is permanent - customer expectations, as well as your product/service, are bound to change, and new problems can arise at any time. So it’s recommended that you optimize your maps to accommodate new touchpoints or remove existing ones based on the various interaction scenarios. 
   
• Communicate your customer journey map to your entire organization. Educate all teams and discuss strategies on how you can eradicate recurring problems that your customers face. This will help you solve problems end-to-end and develop all-rounder solutions for your business. Customer Support isn't just the job of a sole team, but the entire company itself.

Hope this helps! :)

Hi, @Gane! Excellent question. 

A customer journey is a holistic map of interactions a customer has with your company as they ascend through the customer lifecycle. 

A sales funnel is a series of sales & marketing efforts that lead to a potential customer making a purchase. A typical sales funnel works as follows:

Awareness > Interest > Decision > Sales 

A sales funnel is just a subset of a customer journey. Customer journeys go beyond conversions. From pre-purchases to post-purchases and repeated purchases, every touchpoint matters and builds the bigger picture - Customer Experience. 

Hope this helps! :)